Is free will real?

[Mudhammam]

I see a sunlit mountain range, and call it beautiful-- because in the context of living as this particular human beaing, sunlit mountain ranges are really beautiful. I know it to be so, because I can see the beauty as clearly as I can see the color red. I then decide which peak I will walk to next: A or B. I'm at liberty to choose either, so I "listen" to my feelings, I consult my memories, I check the time, and I make my choice. That is the exact description of the exercise of free will.

No, no, no. I'm with you on "this red object before me manipulates my emotions and I describe it as beauty." There's nothing logically problematic or "objectively" erroneous with a description of your perception as subjectively determined by your ideal of the beautiful; that you're an infinitely complex chemical process interacting with an environment that, as a result, produces thought, and a certain configuration gives rise to the idea of beauty in a particular context. The idea of free will, on the other hand, is nonsensical and nowhere to be had under the microscope.

I'm not sure what this "accurate formula" stuff is all about. Do you have an accurate formula of the self? I'm pretty sure you do not: in fact, it's not to be found anywhere, to be measured by anyone/anything, or even to be precisely defined in terms that COULD make the self objectively observable. And yet few, even here, are willing to go so far as to say that the self is an illusion. How about the idea of reality itself? Is it non-arbitrarily defined or even definable? What are your criteria for establishing whether an abstraction represents reality or not?

The self is an illusion so far as it confuses the thought of "self" with a definite (immaterial?) object, or homunculus, that is a little man in the brain who is separate from experience, the thing upon whom experiences are impressed. Beneath all our conceptions is an idea, an idea that a singular, central "self" is thinking. Contrarily, our brains are thinking machines, and the thought "self" is the ever-present subject upon whom experiences typically take shape.

My answer to this last question is to accept that there's no demonstrably objective truth that holds true for all contexts, and take things as they present themselves in different contexts: particles in the context of QM, continuous surfaces in the context of classical mechanics and everyday observation, and free will in the context of living out my life as a human being. As you argued, the particle-ness of QM particles doesn't take away from the truth that my desk is flat; but I'd add that the REASON it doesn't is because of the shift in context.

You're suggesting practical free will; fine, that's simply saying it's a necessary illusion, and maybe it is. I'm saying metaphysical free will is a contradictio in adjecto.